There is a story here in Australia about a woman who is rallying to have BitCoins banned.The reason being, that while she was away from home, her son bought cocaine from an online merchant that deals with BitCoins and he overdosed and died.

I understand that she would be in pain, and needs something to blame. But really...

Unlike digital currencies, which are carbon neutral allowing us to breathe cleaner air, each dollar bill is manufactured from virgin materials like cotton and linen, which go through extensive treatment and processing. Last year, the Federal Reserve had to destroy $3 billion worth of $100 bills after a “printing error.” Certainly this cannot be the greenest currency.

You know, this might be quite important to me...if I really understood the fundamental valuation of bitcoins. I don't...and judging by the recent news about bitcoin exchanges, I don't really think I need to bother.

Personally, I would love to ban dollar bills. Take a lesson from the Canadians, introduce a two-dollar coin, and start bills at five.

I know, not the issue under discussion here. Just a point of personal peeve.

(I understand the philosophical appeal of bitcoins. I just think they're in the process of slowly and expensively and destructively demonstrating why online payment is a much harder problem than most people think.)

Rep Jared Polis (who proudly wears Boing Boing tee-shirts in his spare time, and rocks some snazzy duds on the floor of Congress) wrote a mock-serious request for dollar bills to be removed from circulation, pointing out that practically every objection that Manchin raised over Bitcoin applies equally well to paper money.

Oh, don't worry, cash will be banned soon enough. National securities reasons will be cited, the fact that the $100 bill is the most widely traded and widely counterfeited bill used as evidence of cash's danger, and so on.

After that, all your spending will either be cleared through the federal reserve or through a private company.

Speaking as a West Virginian, I really hate Joe Manchin. He's probably the second worst thing that's happened to WV is recent years (the first being his predecessor, Robert Byrd, who did everything in his power to keep WV poor by turning it into a welfare state of the Federal government).

Hey, but at least Manchin (D-WV) is an avid supporter of mountain-top removal -- we can be poor and environmentally wrecked at the same time!